27. The Two Crane Flies
The Two Crane Flies
He’s a prince. He’s a prince. He’s a prince.
Not just any prince. The Crown Prince.
And the prince I was engaged to.
I’m barely aware of time passing, the other pilots and soldiers, the never-ending corridors, as Meg leads me back to her cabin.
There, I immediately curl up under her crisp covers and, in my mind, reach for the only other person in the world who might be able to give me the information I need.
The last memories I’m missing. Because I need them.
I don’t know if this will work – me finding her – but I have to try.
My eyes shut tight, I conjure up an image of Old Mother. She’ll be in our house, asleep in her bed.
I imagine creeping right over to her. Her mind stirs at my presence. I can hear the sound of it. A gentle, almost metallic tinkling sound, like a wind chime being played by a breeze.
She lets me in.
Her mind looks a lot like our house. I see our furniture. Her shawl over her armchair. But there is more of everything, and things we never even owned. Potions. Books. Globes. Birds in cages. All of this knowledge she has from over one hundred years on this planet.
Ara, she says to me. Her voice is quiet as a river.
Ancient and knowing as a mountain. You managed to visit me.
Entering the minds of others is not something easily done by those with magic – a link, of sorts, from our common royal ancestor, perhaps the Sisters themselves, when they walked the earth.
Your magic must be getting so strong. I’m so proud of you.
Shock grips me. “You can speak.” I’ve never heard her voice, in all my life. She lost her voice in a blood magic accident decades ago.
You’re in my dream, child. Here, I can speak. And I can feel you are carrying pain. Tell me how I can help you.
In her head, my voice echoing as if in a cavern, I say, “You read the Queen a fortune, didn’t you? You picked up the Card of The Soulmates. She thought it related to her son, and to me. It changed my life. Ruined it.”
She looks at me solemnly. Maybe even, with pity. As if she thinks there are still things I don’t understand, and probably never will.
Your life wasn’t destroyed by that fortune. It was made by it. You would not be here today without it.
All at once, the room starts disintegrating. Things are floating away from me, churning around our heads. Candles, pages, splinters. The birds are shooting out of their cages and flying off. The walls and floors themselves are dissolving into nothing but slippery white smoke.
I don’t know what’s happening, but I ignore it. There is nothing else that matters but Old Mother, and the truth.
I grit my teeth. Can hardly speak. “Don’t talk in riddles. How would I not be here without the fortune?”
I will tell you everything you wish to know, Ara. But only when you are ready to know it. You may even remember much of it yourself, very soon. You already are.
The effort to keep myself anchored in Old Mother’s mind is catastrophic. My skull feels as though it’s cracking, and wind is roaring in my ears. Around me, more items are sucking up and out of the image. Like an airlock was opened, and soon nothing will be left.
“I’m ready now, Old Mother. And you will tell me everything I need to know.”
You need more strength. I’m so, so sorry, my child. I wish I could do more for you.
I shriek, into her mind, “I am strong enough!” I lunge at her. “It’s my past. My future! Tell me them!”
She disappears from where I thought she was, just before I had a chance to grab her. She reappears further back. I realise there is nothing else left in the open space we’re standing in. Just our bodies, and the smoke.
Her reply is calm. She doesn’t even flinch.
You know your future. You have known it all your life. I am sorry you are having to learn it all again. But yours is a fate that requires strength and courage to understand and bear. Time, and practice of your magic, will give you those things.
The smoke is thickening. The space is darkening. I have to squint to see Old Mother, even though she’s right in front of me again. She’s staring at me so full of love.
I hate her.
I want to hurt her.
I could scratch her milky eyes right out of their sockets.
Was I ever angry before, in my life? Those moments pale in comparison to this. You could use my body to incinerate something. Maybe hope.
“You’re a vile woman,” I spit at her. “I thought you loved me. But you’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you? Lying to me. Using me.”
That same calmness that makes me want to die.
I do love you, Ara. Even now, when I can feel you loathing me – can see, in your mind’s eye, the way you wish to hurt me.
To still love someone when you can bear witness to that, that is the kind of strength you will need in order to hear the two fortunes I read the Queen, and learn your fate once more.
My mind clasps something she just said.
“Two fortunes?”
I can tell you this, at least. One was the original fortune. The second was the fortune I drew to try to change the fate predicted in the first. It is a risky business, cheating the stars.
My voice lifts higher. “You’re just giving me more riddles—”
Old Mother interrupts me. There’s someone else here.
“In your head?”
No. In yours.
And then I hear it. A single word, softly spoken to me, in my dream.
“Ara?”
I whip my head around. See nothing.
Old Mother has disappeared. I claw viciously at the smoke where she left, the way I’d wanted to do to her face, but find only air.
Pain wracks my chest as I collapse onto my knees.
My head thrown back, I scream out in a pure release of rage at the smoke swirling over me – and feel waves of magic coming off me as I do so.
Funny, how I feel so powerful at a time when I am powerless.
I wish I could split this miserable space wide open.
The moment I think it, the air shakes.
Maybe splitting the sky is possible.
Maybe it’s exactly what I should do.
But just as I start gathering my magic to me, I hear the voice again, in the back of my mind.
“Ara. Say something, if you are here. I cannot see you.”
I open my eyes. The power drops out from me with the sound of sucking air.
“Drake?”
I see it. A shadow walking through the smoke. I can make out his outline. Short hair, broad shoulders, strong physique. Could count the assured steps he takes towards me. I can’t see a single detail of his face, yet I could fill it in perfectly if asked to describe it.
It’s maddening.
The smoke eases as he nears and I see him properly. His features are just as I knew they would be. His smooth skin, flush against his structured face. His jaw, all edges. His classically Rhavnan deep-set eyes. They’re not black. They’re just the darkest, fieriest shade of brown I’ve ever known.
He stops right in front of me.
“Good,” he says softly, peering down at me. “It worked.”
“You’re real,” I state, dumbfounded.
He looks around. The strangest look twists his face. Like he wants to smirk, but instead, he frowns. “Is this your mind, Ara? What an unexpectedly dark place you live in.”
Anger surges through me again. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t see me like this.
“Get out!” I yell. My words echo around the open space. When I hear my own voice coming back to me, I shiver. It sounds nothing like me.
He hasn’t flinched. “Why are you on the ground?”
“Please, Drake,” I say, teeth tight. “I don’t know how, or why, you’re here. But I need you to leave.”
“Let me help you up,” he says, holding his hand out to me.
“No,” I bite back.
But he doesn’t retract it. I stare at his sturdy fingers hovering in the space between us. The smoke around me is thinning.
I get up by myself.
“You’re in my head,” I state, dusting myself off.
“Yes,” he says, his hand back by his side.
I nod, understanding something. “Good. That means I can remove you from here myself.”
I close my eyes. Imagine him as something I could pluck out from me, like a splinter.
I pull.
But he holds fast.
“Ara. Stop,” he says – low, like a warning.
And I know why it’s not working. He’s not a splinter. He’s more like something already in my veins.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll just have to bleed him out.
I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. Keep trying.
I feel a pressure through my body. He’s pushing back. Flooding me.
“Ara,” he says again, strained. “I came here to speak with you – and it is using up a lot of my magic. So, let me speak.”
I do nothing but let out a long, heated breath.
I open my eyes.
I gasp.
The smoke has dissipated, and the world is brighter for it. The air is hazy, as if lit with rays of light from an unseen sun, and crane flies drift by lazily. A gentle breeze ruffles my hair.
He’s still in front of me, just where I left him.
“How did you do that?” I whisper.
“You did it yourself,” he says, with the thinnest lift of his shoulders. “There is nowhere you have more power than in your dreams.”
My head spins.
He steps forward. Another step, and he would be part of me.
“Ara. I am going to will you to wake up. I believe – now our magic is stronger – I will be able to do it from my cabin. And then we are going to meet, in our world, on the Deck 6 stairs.”
“I don’t want to do that,” I reply, quickly.
He tilts his head. “Don’t you? These memories. I believe, when you find one, I gain one. And you seem to have found many, tonight.”
“Yes,” I say. Then, “No.” Then, “I don’t know.”
He looks at me oddly. Like he either can’t understand me at all – or can, quite perfectly.
“What’s my favourite colour, Ara? I remembered yours. Maybe when I did that, you remembered mine.”
“I don’t know it.”
“You do know,” he insists. “You must know.”
I don’t. I want to tell him that.
But my mouth betrays me. The answer falls right out of me.
“Black,” I say. “But a soft black. Like the sky on a clear night.”
I want to scream.
“You love to read,” he continues. “You can speak all twelve of the known languages, including the Muted Word, which is spoken by your great-great grandmother, who is still alive due to her rare blood magic. You have a special bond with her.”
“Stop it.”
“You would not consider yourself religious, but you do pray to the Sisters, now and again. Not that you would ever tell anyone.”
“Drake,” I say, sharp. “This doesn’t matter. These are some superficial things the Queen – I know she’s your mother, by the way – must have told you about me—”
“You are lonely. You are lonely all the time. You are strong. You are good. You go out of your way to be those things. Yet people use you. They lie to you. Ruin you. It maddens you. There is a darkness in you that would swallow you whole if you were to let it.” Quietly, he says, “Sometimes, letting it is what you want.” Almost a whisper, he says, “Sometimes, it’s the only thing you want. ”
I’m… shocked.
I’m scared.
I can’t breathe or speak. It’s like he’s silenced my heart. Smothered the breath from my throat.
He’s completely still.
I swallow. In the smallest voice I’ve ever owned, I ask, “The Queen told you all that?”
“No,” he says. He motions slowly with his hand, to the hazy open space around us. A crane fly almost lands on his finger. “I learned it when I felt it. Just now.”
I’m speechless.
“Meet me on the Deck 6 stairs,” he says again. Soft, like a melody, he whispers, “I want you to wake up now.”
My eyes fly open.